Scrap Haj subsidy; use it for Muslims' education: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has directed the Centre to reduce, and abolish within 10 years, the huge subsidy provided for Haj pilgrims. It asked the government to invest the amount - averaging over 650 crore a year, in the last five years - for education and other measures for social upliftment of Muslims.

"We direct the central government to progressively reduce the amount of subsidy so as to completely eliminate it within 10 years from today," said a bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana P Desai.

"The subsidy money may be more profitably used for upliftment of the community in education and other indices of social development," said Justice Alam, who authored the verdict. The order is significant since the SC had earlier upheld the constitutional validity of Haj subsidy.

The court said it was no authority to speak on Muslim community's behalf and that it would be presumptuous to tell the Muslims what was a good or bad religious practice even though it referred to the holy Quran which mandated Haj pilgrimage only if the pilgrim was able to afford his expenses for travelling, food and stay.

The court said it was aware that in many other purely religious events there were direct and indirect deployment of state funds and state resources. "Nevertheless, we are of the view that Haj subsidy is something that is best done away with," the bench said.

"We have no doubt that a very large majority of Muslims applying to the Haj committee for going to Haj would not be aware of the economics of their pilgrimage and of all the facts are made known a good many of the pilgrims would not be very comfortable in the knowledge that their Haj is funded to a substantial extent by the government," the Supreme Court bench said.

The court said it will examine the functioning of the Haj Committee of India and its selection process for sending pilgrims for Haj. It came down heavily on the Centre and ordered it to slash the number of its representatives to be sent along with Haj delegations.

The SC ruling comes a fortnight after the Centre informed it about its decision to restrict Haj pilgrimage at government subsidy only as a 'once-in-a-lifetime' affair as against the existing policy of 'once in five years'.

In an affidavit filed before the SC, the government had said new guidelines have been framed to ensure that priority is given to applicants who have never performed Haj.